State supermajorities depend on a few races

ECARSON CITY — VERYBODY will be closely watching the results at the top of the ticket come Tuesday night. But what happens down the ballot could have a significant impact on Nevada government, with a Democratic legislative supermajority once again in play this year.

And for the Legislature, the fight over the balance of power effectively boils down to just seven or eight of the 52 total seats up

for grabs this cycle.

In 2018, Democrats won a supermajority in the Assembly, taking 29 of the 42 seats. But they fell just 24 votes shy of a 14-person supermajority in the Senate, as Republican Keith Pickard oh-so-narrowly fended off Democrat Julie Pazina in the Henderson Senate district.

A supermajority is when one party holds two-thirds of the seats in a chamber. It allows that party to pass tax and revenue increases without needing a single vote from the other side of the aisle.

This cycle, Democrats again have a chance to take control of 14 Senate seats for the supermajority, but doing so requires them to fend off a pair of well-funded Republicans in two other tight districts.

On the Assembly side, Republicans are focused on four key seats, and need to flip at least two of them to break up the Democratic supermajority that left the Assembly GOP effectively powerless in the 2019 legislative session.

“Give us two, and we’ll consider it not a bad election cycle,” said Eric Roberts, executive director of the Assembly Republican Caucus.

There are 52 seats in the Legislature up for election this cycle — 10 in the Senate and all 42 in the Assembly.

So why does the balance of power essentially rest in a handful of races?

First, there are 13 races where candidates are running unopposed in the general election and are guaranteed to win. Others have established incumbents going up against only third-party candidates.

And for the majority of the remaining seats on the ballot, one party holds a voter registration advantage of at least 10 points, a rough indicator of whether the district is competitive or not, as it is rare to see candidates close gaps larger than that.

Senate races

On the Senate side, it comes down to three races: Senate Districts 5, 6 and 15. Democrats hold a current 13-8 seat lead and need to pick up one seat to reach a supermajority.

Cheryl Bruce, executive director of the Senate Democratic Caucus, said that Democrats getting a supermajority would be “critical,” and that “the stakes have gotten higher this week,” after the newest justice for the U.S. Supreme Court was confirmed last week.

“After the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett at the Supreme Court, a lot of things hang in the balance at the federal level. The Affordable Care Act, LGBTQ rights, a woman’s right to choose,” Bruce said. “We have an opportunity to elect Democrats to protect Nevadans at the state level.”

But two of those competitive races are currently held by Democrats and will need to be held to keep any chance of the supermajority alive.

That includes SD 6, the seat currently held by Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro that is being chal